Films & Schedules - FRANCE

In this retelling of the tale of the wife-killing Bluebeard, Breillat reminds us all that the best fairytales are dark around the edges. The film intercuts between the stories of two pairs of sisters. The first is set in the 1950s and features a young girl who loves torturing her older sister with dramatic readings of the story of Bluebeard. In the second, set during the Renaissance, a young girl becomes engaged to Lord Bluebeard, despite the suspicious disappearances of his previous wives.

Following the death of their father, Anne and Marie-Catherine are cast from boarding school and sent back to their mother. With no money for dowry, younger sister Marie-Catherine agrees to wed the wealthy but notorious aristocrat Lord Bluebeard, whose previous wives have all suspiciously disappeared. Will Marie-Catherine be next? Both surprisingly straightforward and slyly subversive, Breillat’s telling of Charles Perrault’s lurid 18th-century fable teases out the class and gender conflicts present in the original, reminding us that the best fairy tales are tinged with perverse darkness. Using parallel storylines, Breillat intercuts the fairy tale itself with childhood scenes set in a safe, bourgeois home in the 1950s, where a young girl frightens her older sister, and herself, with repeated readings of the titillating Freudian tale.

Selected Filmography: 36 Fillette (87), Romance (99), Fat Girl (00), Sex Is Comedy (02), The Last Mistress (06).

Sponsored by TV5MONDE and with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

80 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Narrative Feature, French Language, Literature.

The Girl On The Train tells the true story of a young woman who claimed to be the victim of an anti-Semitic attack on a Paris suburban train.

A young woman, Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne), reports that skinheads attacked her, seemingly for being a Jew. The incident becomes a media sensation and attorney Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), an old friend of Jeanne’s mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve), takes the case. The incident and its aftermath, drawn from real events, formed the core of Jean-Marie Besset’s play on which the film is based, but for Téchiné, the dramatic entanglements provide an opportunity to explore the complex family and social relationships that surround and define his characters. Notions of class, ethnicity, and who’s in and who’s out in contemporary France course through the film, offering a provocative reflection on the creation of identity at a time of ever-increasing social tension.

Selected Filmography: The Bronte Sisters (79), I Don’t Kiss (91), My Favorite Season (93), Alice and Martin (98), Changing Times (04), The Witness (07).

Sponsored by TV5MONDE and with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

110 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Narrative Feature, French Language, Jewish.

Sentenced to prison at age 19, A Prophet is the story of a seemingly shy and weak boy who slowly rises in the ranks of the prison’s reigning Corsican gang, all the while secretly devising his own plans.

Frenchman Malik El Djebena, part Arab, part Corsican, is condemned to six years in prison. Arriving at the jail entirely alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. He is 19 years old and cannot read or write. Cornered by the leader of the Corsican gang currently ruling the prison, he is given a number of “missions” to carry out, which toughen him up and gain the gang leader’s confidence in the process. Malik is a fast learner and rises up the prison ranks, all the while secretly devising his own plans. “Audiard’s rich thriller is elegantly structured, arresting in its detailing of a little-known subculture, filled with fascinating characters, and gripping from beginning to end.”—Film Comment.

Selected Filmography: A Self-Made Hero (96), The Beat That My Heart Skipped (04).

Winner, Grand Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival, and this year’s French submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Co-sponsored by Alliance Française de Portland and TV5MONDE, and with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

150 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, French Language.

Welcome tells the story of a young Kurd, Bilal, who aims to swim to England from Calais, and the swimming instructor who agrees to train him for the treacherous crossing.

Managing to be political without being heavy-handed, Welcome focuses on illegal immigrants trying to reach England from Calais, and the risk taken by the French people who help them. Bilal, a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee, left his native Iraq shortly after his girlfriend emigrated to England, and wants to join her. His trek across Europe comes to an abrupt end on the northern coast of France. How to get across the cold English Channel? He decides to head for the local swimming pool to begin training for the swim of his life. There he meets lifeguard Simon, to whom he eventually confides his grand plan. Simon takes Bilal under his wing and secretly teaches him how to do the crawl, despite ongoing threats from the police, who imprison those who aid a growing community nurturing an inextinguishable hope of making a new life in the West.

Selected Filmography: Lost In Transit (93), Don’t Make Trouble (01), The Light (04).

Sponsored by TV5MONDE and with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

116 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, French Language.

Resnais' career-defining masterpiece deals with the fate-altering ripples triggered by a seemingly ordinary purse snatching.

“Resnais delivers a career-crowning masterpiece with this delightful roundelay, based on Christian Gailly’s novel ‘The Incident,’ about the fate-altering ripples triggered by a seemingly ordinary purse snatching. The purse belongs to Marguerite (Sabine Azéma), a dentist who moonlights as an aviatrix. Its contents are retrieved by Georges (André Dussollier), a married man who soon finds himself infatuated with the purse’s owner, even though he hasn’t actually met her yet. Add in a couple of keystone cops, some dizzying aerial acrobatics, and the glorious camerawork of cinematographer Eric Gautier and you have the recipe for a uniquely playful meditation on coincidence and desire that suggests Resnais, at age 87, is truly in his prime.”—New York Film Festival.

Selected Filmography: Hiroshima mon amour (59), Last Year at Marienbad (61), Muriel (63), Mon oncle d’Amérique (80), Mélo (86), Smoking/No Smoking (93), The Same Old Song (97), Cœurs (06).

Sponsored by TV5MONDE and with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

104 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, French Language.